Sinhalese Naval Power

r UNIVERSITY OF CEYLON REVIEW ending in a fortuitous landfall on an auspicious day at the hitherto unknown and rich island of Ceylon. One of these legendary versions related by Sinhalese Naval Power Fa Hsicn ' implies a progressive colonisation and is the least unreal of these stories, all of which are fabulous and were embellished with miraculous URING a period whose beginning is uncertain but whose termi- and supernatural elements when they came to be written many centuries nation may be placed, approximately, towards the end of the 4th later. What we may safely assume is that this was no haphazard adventure -D century B.C., Ceylon was colonised by Indo-Aryan mariners and but that the first settlement of Indo-Aryans, who were an agricultural eJ~ligrants who sailed from the deltas of the Indus and the Ganges, the community, was an organised expedition to a known land, that regular ci:rliest arrivals being those who came from. north-western India. Before communication was maintained thereafter with the homeland, and that tVIey established settlements in Ceylon, these mariners, whose business was the success of the pioneer settlement encouraged further waves of emigrants ~rade, had doubtless made several coastal voyages to this Island and carried to follow. The distance by sea was about 1,500 miles and none but intrepid '(back its products, or the profits from those products, to their homelands. seamen in sea-worthy ships could have accomplished this succession of ~ln B.C. 325, Oncsicritus, the chief pilot of Alexander the Great, was told outward and return voyages. tby the seafaring people of the Indus delta, who had long been acquainted The background of the Indo-Aryan settlers in Ceylon was, therefore, vvith Ceylon, about the situation, the surroundings and the products of one of expertness in sea faring, namely, in the building of sea-going vessels, .chc Island. It is probable that the Indo-Aryans first learned of Ceylon the efficient management and navigation of them on the ocean, the ability fro111South Indian sailors, with whom they must necessarily have made to make voyage of many days duration, and a knowledge of winds and earlier contacts and who, it is reasonable to suppose, could not have been I.i currents : concomitantly, they would have been equally expert in the ignorant of the existence of their large, island neighbour. In abandoning ~ their homelands and journeying to settle in far-distant Ceylon, the southern- lesser skills of building and operating smaller craft for the Ceylon pearl most limit of their then known world, the first Indo-Aryan emigrants and chank fisheries and of boats for the catching of fish for food. (A fish took a step which was perhaps not irrevocable because the ships they was the distinctive emblem of the independent dynasty of Ga/1/(/(1IS who travelled in could have taken them back if the enterprise failed. Prominent, ruled over south-eastern Ceylon but lost their authority early in the 2nd probably first, among the reasons which urged them to choose Ceylon century B.C.)2. Sea faring, in every aspect of its activities, was the forte for their new settlement would have been a reliance, if not a sense of assu- of these earliest colonists of Ceylon and should have been the inherited rance, that they would not encounter resistance which they could not skill of their descendants, the Sinhalese. In the reign of Devanarnpiya overcome from the peoples, whoever they were, who then inhabited Tissa (B.C. 246-206) the Sinhalese were still making long voyages because Ceylon, as well as from others, like themselves, who were trading with the king's envoys sailed to the Ganges and back with gifts fot the Mauryan the Island. A second vital consideration would have been the greater emperor, Asoka, and they repeated the double jcurncy in the following material gains that would accrue to them from. the known riches of the year. The existence of active communication between Ceylon and the new territory in pearls, precious stones and chanks : possibly, they were Mamyan empire (Asoka mentions Ceylon in his edicts) can scarcely be also aware of additional sources of wealth in ivory, elephants, tortoise doubted. The return from voyages abroad, in one day, of seven ships shell and spices. A third important factor on which they would' have to a port in Rohana laden with valuable cargoes, is recorded in a semi- relied would have been an abundance of water and cultivable land on which legendary story of the early 2nd century B.C.3 they could raise crops for their sustenance. !. 1. Fa Hsien's travels, H. A. Giles, London, 1953. The Vijaya legend of the Ceylon Chronicles (itself a combination of . 2. C. J. S. (G). u 99, 100, 175. 176 ; Sir Paul Pieris Felicitation Volume, 66, 67. 3. M 11.20-39: 18.6-8: 19.1-8 : 22.60. Either the Sinhalese had 110 knowledge of the currents various other legends) describes a voyage at the mercy of winds and currents . on th~ western coast of Ceylon or they had lost that knowledge when the story of VHlaradevi came to I ..•. : be Wtltten. It is said that she was cast adrift on the sea near the mouth of the Kalani River and that N"tc.- The word" navy" is not used ill its modern sense of warships exclusively. In ancient times, the vessel was carried to a landing place in Ruhuna. This is impossible because the current is northward the merchant ship and the fighting ship were one. In Elizabethan England of the 16th century, ;,anthd not southward, and it is this northward current which accounts for the pattern of the lagoons 011 \ , .. e West coast. the" Navy" meant" all English ships and all English seamen." ~ 78 79 SINHALESE NAVAL POWER UNIVERSITY OF CEYLON REVIEW Thereafter, Sinhalese sea power appears to have suffered eclipse. In volent rulers, in marked contrast to later Tamil conquerors, and this benign the 3rd century B.C. and earlier there was active maritime trade between foreign rule is consistent with a policy of achiecving commercial control and at the same time giving every encouragement to the subject people to the Arabs and the Indians. Then, ill the 2nd century B.C., the Greeks began to cut out the Arab intermediaries and to make coastwise expeditions increase their production of and profits from thrat icles of commerce. The themselves to India. The direct dealing stimulated trade between the final phase in the subjection of Sinhalese sea power, it may be conjectured, West and India. The South Indian ports, too, began to be visited with was the paI.lQ.yanconquest in the reign of Vattagamani Abhaya early in the increasing frequency by Western ships. A trade boom had begun. Great 1st century B.C. To this time may be assigned the in scriptions at the capital, opportunities for acquiring wealth by the sale of the products of South Anuradliapura, of a guild or corporation of Tamil householders whose India and Ceylon to these Western merchants presented themselves, and leader was a ship's captain.> doubtless excited the cupidity of the rulers and governing classes of these The collapse of Sinhalese sea power and the capture of Ceylon's external regions. Early in the 1st century B.C., the great discovery was made of trade by Tamil intermediaries were largely discounted about the year 125 the use of the monsoons to sail direct across the Indian Ocean, and Greek when Roman ships began to sail into Ceylon harbours and to deal directly and Roman ships came with regularity and in much greater numbers to with the Sinhalese. Chinese ships were also trading direct with the South Indian harbours. The products of Ceylon were obtained by the Sinhalese at this time and Ceylon became eventually the entrepot of trade Romans in South Indian ports to which they were conveyed in South Indian in the Indian Ocean. A resuscitation of Sinhalese sea power was no longer ships. During the period of about two and a half centuries preceding the essential solely in her trade interests, because the Romans and the Chinese second decade of the 2nd century A.C. (when Roman ships began to make would have seen to it that their direct dealings with Ceylon were not regular visits to Ceylon and deal direct with the Sinhalese), the Sinhalese interfered with by the Tamil navies : and the Sinhalese had no aggressive had only an indirect share in the flourishing trade with the West and were intentions nor any desire to extend their territory overseas. Moreover, dependent on South Indian shipping and ~ntermediaries for the transport the ancient sea faring skill of the Sinhalese had been lost for over 200 years and marketing of their valuable merchandise." and now survived as a memory, while the Tamils were actively engaged during that period in seaborne activities and had attained a high level of This loss, in the second half of the 2nd century B.C., of their sea power efficiency which they never lost thereafter. 6 which the Sinhalese had previously possessed in a high degree becomes, therefore, a very significant event in the early history of Ceylon. The The Ciilaval'nsa states that Mcggallana I (491-509) "by instituting only apparent reason for it is that the vast, new opportunities for highly guards for the sea-coast, freed the Island frem danger."7 It may be that profitable trade created by the advent of Western ships and merchants in this statement is to be perceived the beginning of the revival of Sinhalese into South Indian waters led to a conflict between the Tamils and the sea power, for it did revive and became powerful once again in the reign Sinhalese for the control of Ceylon's lucrative export trade in those seas.

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